Kosovo Chief Surrendering to Hague Tribunal

By MARLISE SIMONS

Published: March 9, 2005

Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj of Kosovo unexpectedly resigned Tuesday and agreed to surrender to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, which said it had indicted him for actions as a guerrilla commander fighting Serbian forces during the 1998-99 war.

Mr. Haradinaj's decision to step down and answer war crimes charges came as a shock in Kosovo, a Serbian province of close to two million people where he became prime minister in December and remains a popular war hero.

In a statement, he said he was ''innocent of any crime'' and felt ''insulted by this process.''

''I feel they are taking me from my job at a time when I am giving the maximum for my country,'' he said, adding that he ''never believed'' he would have to leave office, but was accepting it for the country's sake.

His case is the latest in a series of developments involving senior officials who have turned themselves in to The Hague tribunal, which deals with crimes from the 1990's wars that tore Yugoslavia apart.

At the United Nations tribunal, prosecutors released no details about the charges, but it was widely known in Kosovo that tribunal investigators questioned him twice in November, just before he became prime minister. According to reports there, investigators focused on the killings of Kosovo Serb civilians and Albanian ''collaborators,'' carried out by men under his command.

Mr. Haradinaj, 36, a former Kosovo Liberation Army chief and the most senior Kosovar to be indicted so far, said the charges against him were based on ''Serbian lies.''

In Kosovo, which is under United Nations administration, NATO increased its 18,000-member peacekeeping contingent overnight by 1,000 more troops, fearing that the announcement could revive confrontations between the Kosovo Albanians and the Serbian minority.

The Kosovo Liberation Army was a Western-backed ethnic Albanian force that fought Serbian troops in the late 1990's in the province, until military intervention by NATO ended the conflict in 1999. The United Nations estimates that up to 10,000 Kosovo Albanians were killed.

Despite the end of open hostilities, tensions are high. Last March, for example, 19 people were killed during riots when Albanians attacked Serbs and other minority members.

For the tribunal in The Hague, the surrender from Kosovo comes at an unusually busy time. Since October, six high-ranking former Serbian and Bosnian Serb officers have arrived to face war crimes charges. The latest was no less than the former chief of the Serbian army, Gen. Momcilo Peresic, who surrendered to the United Nations prison on Monday. Just days earlier, the court had taken custody of a former Bosnian army commander, Rasim Delic.

The officers, from opposing sides in wars that took more than 200,000 lives, have gone to The Hague as a result of economic and political pressure from Europe and the United States. All entities of the former Yugoslavia -- including Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo -- now want to talk about their future in Europe, and the European Union has made cooperation with the tribunal a condition for any talks about closer ties.

At the same time, the war crimes tribunal itself has been under pressure to step up its pace. The United Nations Security Council, which created the special court, has demanded that it concentrate on the highest ranking suspects only and will close down its work by 2008.

For Kosovo, the stakes are particularly high. The Serbian province hopes to begin talks this year on independence, which has the backing of a huge majority of its people. One price to be paid, it appears, is the surrender of Mr. Haradinaj.

The NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, hinted Tuesday at that price. ''Kosovo is entering a crucial period during which it will be judged on its progress meeting the standards set by the international community,'' he said in Brussels. ''Cooperation with the tribunal is one of those standards.''

Mr. Haradinaj has had a wide-ranging career which includes a stint as a platoon commander in the Yugoslav Army, and later as an immigrant, working as a carpenter, security guard and martial arts teacher in Switzerland. During the Kosovo separatist rebellion against Serbia, he gained a reputation as a tough guerrilla fighter and zone commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army. He was also widely vilified in Belgrade, where the authorities have charged him with several hundred killings and kidnappings.

His office said he would travel to The Hague on Wednesday. The deputy prime minister, Adem Salihaj, is to take his place until Parliament approves a new prime minister.

On Tuesday, Mr. Haradinaj said his indictment was a ''result of the trade-off that some have made with the Serbian government'' to make sure that Belgrade would extradite high-ranking Serbian war crimes suspects.

Tribunal officials have declined to comment. The office of the prosecutor confirmed the indictment, but gave no details.

At the United Nations jail near The Hague, Mr. Haradinaj will join some 50 prisoners -- including his longtime enemy, Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian president -- as well as three of his own former comrades.